Graduate Special: Mock the geek

Did you hear the one about the Irishman who loves black holes and hates homeopaths? He walked into university a physics nerd and ended up as one of the UK's most successful comedians. Dara O'Briain tells Helen Thomson how he went from the big bang to the big stage, and why he just can't stand pseudoscience.

A degree in mathematical physics is pretty hardcore. Why did you choose that course?

I was just a nerd - I was insanely in love with maths and theoretical physics when I was a teenager and wanted to learn more about it, although I think there was an element of teenage boy bravado in choosing what was clearly a ridiculously difficult degree. But I was good at it. When you're a dweeby 17-year-old, finding it difficult to talk to women, don't underestimate the appeal of having a world where you can think: "At least I'm good at this".

Was it everything you hoped it would be?

In my degree, there was a large element of not being able to see the wood for the trees. When you're wading through Fourier transforms and functionals you forget that you started this because you were intrigued by the shape of the universe. But then right at the very end of a really long journey you learn something like the Schwarzschild solution to the field equations of general relativity, which hinted at the existence of black holes, and suddenly you remember why you began the journey.

But it wasn't enough to make you continue?

No, by that stage I'd taken up college debating, which was the first time I'd ever done any public speaking. I suddenly discovered I got a massive rush from standing in front of an audience and making them laugh. That was a complete surprise.

So has your science degree added any value to what you do now?

I don't judge my degree as a utility to me in later life. It was the subject at school that most impassioned me and about which I was most curious. Whether it added value is a notion that I find in itself to be a bit cold and utilitarian. The fact that I didn't go on with it doesn't mean I don't deeply appreciate the fact that I did it. It left me with an undying respect for those who didn't take the easier and better paid path.

Do you think there's a science to being funny?

You advance in maths by comparing the properties of one thing with the properties of another and you notice similarities in behaviour. Comedy isn't dissimilar to that, in terms of when you write a joke you look at the properties of one thing and you say, "Isn't this a bit like this other thing?" Then you use those properties to make the first thing look ridiculous. But I'm not saying do a maths degree because it'll make you a better comedian. Do a maths degree because you really love the rules of integration.

Do you ever have conversations with your fellow comedians about quantum physics?

When they initially started up the Large Hadron Collider, the whole "big bang" thing came up on Mock The Week. I was in that awkward position of thinking, "It's funny to talk about there being the end of the universe and Russell Howard being sucked into a black hole because he was sitting nearest to Switzerland," but there's a small part of me going, "No! You're misrepresenting this - oh no, you all think... oh, it's all wrong!"

The only time I've ever stamped on a joke for scientific reasons was about MMR. But on the physics one I thought no, it's funnier to let it go. Frankie Boyle was genuinely worried about the black holes. I explained that they were tiny, minuscule things but then the show starts and he's like, "We're all going to die!"

I've got a whole routine which is basically Ben Goldacre lite. It's his book as a collection of one-liners; essentially taking charlatans and quacks and putting them in a large sack and beating them with a stick.

I'm a fierce defender of science because there are two great castles that we as a species have built - one is science and one is art. You can say anything about art, but science is cumulative and people say, "I can't understand what's at the top of that, so I'm just going to scrabble around in the mud outside the castle and build my own shitty version of it out of reassuring platitudes and borrowed terms." Terms like energy. The use of the word energy is one of the great scandals of pseudoscience. That anyone can grab the word energy and say "I can move your negative energy" or "grab this crystal'senergy" drives me up the wall. Up. The. Wall.

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Dara O'Briain tells Helen Thomson how he went from the big bang to the big stage, and why he just can't stand pseudoscience (Image: Rex Features)